


Jamie as a chaser, Jack for the fun

by moonyloonylupin



Series: The Nelson & Murdock Holiday Extravaganza [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: IDK I just really love holiday themed fic, M/M, Post-Season/Series 02, St. Patrick's Day, drinking shenanigans, obviously they love each other again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-15
Updated: 2017-03-15
Packaged: 2018-10-05 17:25:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10313333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonyloonylupin/pseuds/moonyloonylupin
Summary: St. Patrick’s Day has always been theirThing, capital T. Now, Foggy doesn’t know what it is, much less what they are, but…Today sure is turning out to be something.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Ed Sheeran’s “Galway Girl”

St. Patrick’s Day has always been their Thing, capital T. (That, and Cinco de Mayo, but that’s a different story for another day.)

Anyway. 

St. Patrick’s Day has always been their Thing, because there’s nothing more Irish than a freckly Murdock boy with vibrant reds in his hair; because there’s nothing more Irish than the singular Nelson boy who somehow ends up looking like a lobster in the weak light of early March, of all days. Because there was never a better excuse for drinking themselves into relative stupors during Spring Breaks back at Columbia. (Except for when they'd drink themselves into stupors just before finals in May but, again... a story for another time.) 

Now, with Daredevil and the fallout of Nelson & Murdock, Foggy's not too sure what's theirs anymore, if anything. He's not sure what they are or what they were. He's not sure of a lot of things. 

All he's sure of right now is that he's making enough money at Hogarth, Chao & Benowitz to buy the good whiskey, which he's saving in a cabinet in his office for when today inevitably gets drowned in melancholy nostalgia and the obligation to drink his little Irish heart out. 

If he thinks about it, though, it hasn't been all bad, lately. 

He and Matt have been… Talking, is the best way to put it. Trying to put the Frank Castle fiasco and the Elektra: Redux behind them the best way they know how - mostly by ignoring it. When Foggy’s pulling late nights at HC&B, he keeps his phone on his desk where he can see it and keeps an ear out for any night movement that could be Matt. If Matt’s had a good night, he won’t call Foggy. If he’s had a _bad_ night, well. Foggy’s somehow convinced Matt that keeping him in the dark just isn’t cool, _Matty, if this is gonna work, you gotta_ trust _me, buddy._ And Foggy knows trust goes both ways, which is why he wants Matt to call him on his bad nights, wants to prove that he can be cool about this because… 

He misses his best friend. 

And he might end up yelling at him during these late night phone calls, and Matt might sometimes call him in the morning to sheepishly admit that he’s laid up with stitches but didn’t want to bother Foggy in case he was sleeping, but they’re working on it. 

_Ahem._

But even though they’re working on it and St. Patrick’s Day was their _Thing_ , capital _T_ , Foggy didn’t really know how today was going to work out. He went into work and made sure he wore his St. Paddy's Day tie so that no one (no one, “especially not you, Marce, stay away from my ass!”) would even think about pinching him today, so help him. It even says "Kiss Me, I'm Irish," and Hogarth gave him an impressive stink eye but otherwise did not comment. Marci took his face in one hand and shook it back and forth, making kissy noises. Her nails were painted green and felt like talons in his cheek. 

He’s halfway through a case file and steadfastly trying to ignore the parade sounds he can hear from just a few blocks up when he gets a call from the lobby. 

“This is Nelson,” he says distractedly, shuffling papers around. His desk looks like a bomb site, which actually isn’t too out of the ordinary for him, if he’s being honest. It’s the only part of his day-to-day that he was never able to clean up. His apartment is still impeccable, leftover habits from Columbia when he thought Matt needed cleanliness to get around, but his filing habits never changed because Matt couldn’t read his papers anyway, why would he need to know where they are? 

Turns out, Matt can read _some_ files. Not all of them. Some. But still. The point stands. 

“I have a Mr. Murdock here for you. Should I send him up?” 

Foggy freezes with a hand halfway to his coffee mug. He might even stop breathing, who knows, certainly not him. 

It’s only when the voice on the other end says, “Sir?” skeptically, that Foggy realizes he’s been utterly silent. 

“Yea! Yes, I mean,” he clears his throat, “send him up. Tell him I’ll meet him by the elevators.” 

“Of course.” 

He hangs up, still slightly in a daze as he rolls his chair away from his desk, and gets up. 

He allows himself exactly ten seconds of what-the-fuck panic before he shrugs his jacket back on and heads out into the elevator dock. He can feel Marci's eyes watching him from her office but he resolutely doesn't glance her way, tucking his hands into his pockets to at least fabricate an air of natural ease while he's sure his heart is beating a mile a minute. 

Thank God for the early sunburn. No one can accuse him of flushing when the elevator opens and Matt steps through with his cane. 

"Over here, buddy," Foggy says, if only to keep up appearances. No need to have Hogarth watch him let the blind man struggle. Matt tilts his head in the direction of Foggy's voice and walks toward him, the sharp _click clack_ of his cane against the pristine hardwood floors reverberating through the dock. 

Foggy's suits may be of better quality now, and they might actually fit him like they're supposed to (he looked damn good in a suit before, but now he is _killing_ it), but Matt still rocks them like he was made for them. Foggy doesn't know why he's so spruced up, though. As far as he's told Foggy, he doesn't practice much actual law these days and usually goes around in gym clothes or a sweater and soft jeans when he's not sleeping or in his Other Suit. 

He's wearing the tie Foggy got him for their St. Paddy's Day celebration last year, the one with four-leaf clovers all over it. He figured Matt needed the luck, with all the doors he'd walked into that year. It brings out the red in his dark hair, which looks like he actually combed it for once. Foggy wants to mess it up. 

_No, absolutely not, bad Franklin._

"Hey, Fog," he says with a small smile. Foggy tries to reign in his traitorous heart. It's hard. He and Matt don't talk a lot face-to-face in the daytime anymore. He thought it was a step they had to work for. 

And yet. 

Foggy turns back in the direction of his office. "My office is at your two o'clock, straight ahead. Let's talk in there." 

Matt only nods, tightens his grip on his cane, and follows. 

When Matt's settled in the couch off to the side that Foggy only really uses for the more nervous of his clients (so he doesn't use it for much besides napping when he's pulling all-nighters), Foggy shuts the door behind them. He heads over to his desk to grab his now cold cup of coffee, just to have something to hold, and sits on the other end of the couch. 

"What can I do for you, mi amigo?" 

Matt looks significantly more at ease now that they're alone. He folds his cane shut and fiddles with the strap as he talks. 

"It's St. Patrick's Day." 

"That it is!" Foggy says, much too loud, but he doesn't wince and Matt doesn't make a face. 

"Right," Matt smiles, one of his realer ones that's reserved for when he's amused. It's a Foggy-specific smile. 

Foggy Does Not react. He _doesn't_. 

"And I know you're probably busy and can't just up and leave whenever you want like we did back at the office," Foggy's proud of them both, neither of them flinched at the mention of their failed dreams, "but I figured I'd come see what you were doing today. Tonight. Since it's Our Day and all." 

Foggy _thinks_ he's gaping like a fish. He doesn't check his reflection in Matt's glasses to find out. 

Matt still thinks of it as Their Day. In capitals, he definitely didn't imagine the inflection of capitals in his voice. 

Foggy doesn't miss the way Matt starts to pick at the loose thread on the strap of his cane when it takes him a while to answer. He wonders what his body is telling Matt, if anything about the way his brain is going into overdrive registers to his senses. 

"What kind of weird, unconscious signals is my body sending you right now?" Foggy asks, genuinely curious, and he guesses something sounding like it must leak into his voice because Matt doesn't hesitate to answer him. 

"You're sweating a little bit. It tastes... tingly, if that makes sense. It's anticipation, not anxiety or fear. You're doing that thing you do when you're holding back - scratching the knee of your pants. The fabric sounds different against your skin; better money means better suits, I'd imagine," he says that part with a laugh that isn't bitter or condescending in any way. Just a statement of fact. "Your heart is steady. The steadiest it's been around me in a long..." Foggy watches his Adam's apple bob as he swallows. "A long time." 

"Huh." Foggy does feel pretty calm. Like this is normal. Maybe it is now. Isn't that what they're working toward? A new normal? 

He bites his lip and watches Matt start to lose his carefully crafted patience. He suppresses a smirk. Let him squirm a little. 

"Anyway. Yea. I'm not gonna guess what you're thinking. That's what got us into this mess in the first place." He is _struggling_. Foggy wouldn't be surprised if he's reciting Hail Mary's right now. 

"Yea, that might be best," Foggy says, but he decides he's made Matt squirm enough. "Let me finish reading through this case file. I'm sure I could convince Jeri that me leaving early is the most important thing in the world, who knows, she might fall for it." Or he'll just be working extra hours for the next two weeks to make up for it. 

The way Matt's mouth twitches - not a full smile, Foggy figures he's not trying to get his hopes up - makes it kind of worth it. 

###

Matt goes back down to grab them some lunch - because, if today is going to go like any of their other St. Patrick's Days have ever gone before, they're gonna need _something_ in their stomachs - and Jeri rolls her eyes so hard Foggy thinks they'll get stuck inside her head. 

"I'll figure something out, Nelson," she says in reference to his supposed punishment for skipping out early to... drink, basically. But it's much more than that. Matt sought him out. This _means_ something and if the two of them are ever going to get anywhere, he has to make some sacrifices. Even if the sacrifices include some sleep. 

He books it out of the office and into an elevator before Marci can catch him and breathes a sigh of relief when the doors shut and no one else gets on with him. 

The ride down to the lobby is filled with turmoil.

Okay. Maybe he's being a tiny bit dramatic. But it's filled with something a little more apprehensive than anticipation.

This will be the first time they've... done something, really, since the fall-out. Sure, he knows Matt has lunch every now and then with Karen, and she and Foggy have a standing Sunday brunch date, and Foggy has _friends_ and his family, but he's kept pretty much to himself lately. No dates, no new people. He works a lot. Tries not to think about what he and Matt were and almost-were; the dozens of almosts and near-things and possibilities and opportunities they lost from Columbia to now. Foggy knows they're rebuilding something here. 

He just doesn't know what. They're stacking things together without a plan. Maybe that's better. They've always had plans. Perhaps it's time they just let the shattered pieces of their life fall and see what it comes up with. 

When the elevator opens in the lobby, Matt's standing by the security desk with a paper bag and Foggy is Not Freaking Out. 

"To your left, Matty," Foggy says as he approaches, and Matt's stupid mouth tilts up at the corners. He hasn't called him Matty in a long time.

"Hey." Matt holds out the paper bag and Foggy takes it from him, looking inside as he unfolds his cane. "Grease for the stomach lining," he says, gesturing toward the bag and holding out his hand toward Foggy's arm.

Foggy lets him slip his hand into his elbow, easy as it ever was, and leads him out of the lobby. 

"I am _ready_ for Jack Daniels and these bacon fries," Foggy says, stopping them at a crosswalk. 

Matt laughs. "I thought you might be." 

Foggy walks them to some benches around the corner from the office. There're still icicles hanging from the trees from the winter storm earlier this week, and Foggy has to keep steering Matt around patches of black ice (at least, he thinks he does. He's never asked. Maybe he should.) 

"Can you sense black ice? Does it do anything funky to your infrared eyeballs?" 

Matt hums, moving with Foggy as he's led around a particularly vicious looking patch before Foggy picks a bench and plops them down. Matt folds up his cane and waits for Foggy to hand him his burger. 

"You know it's not exactly that." He unwraps his burger and takes a bite, makes a thoughtful chewing face. Foggy digs some bacon fries out from the bottom of the bag. "But when it's cold, everything comes up as sort of the same... frequency, you could say. So I can't really sense the difference between cold concrete and ice, but that's where my cane comes in. The way ice sounds underneath it is sharper than the sidewalk." He shrugs. "I fell a lot more when I was younger. Now I walk with my core, so I'm more careful."

Foggy snorts around a mouthful of burger and bacon. "'Walk with your core.' You sound like a late-night infomercial." 

"I kind of am. Vigilante justice as a workout regiment sounds about as far-fetched as Insanity." 

"Too right you are!" 

This is nice, Foggy thinks - that they can talk about things like Matt's Daredeviling now and then without it being fraught with words left unsaid and residual anger. That they can sit here, on this bench, in the relative chill in the early afternoon on St. Patrick's Day and act as if nothing ever happened to change them. 

But when Matt turns his head to follow a sound, Foggy can make out the fading redness of a scar he doesn't remember being there. He tries not to be upset about it. 

With the way the corner of Matt's mouth falls just the tiniest bit, he's not sure he succeeds. 

###

They end up at a pub that isn't Josie's a couple of blocks from where the parade ended. Green, orange, and white streamers literally cover the streets and there's empty beer cans, confetti, and the occasional puddle of throw up everywhere. If Matt notices ( _be real, Foggy, of course he notices_ ), he doesn't say anything. He simply follows along, hand tucked into the crook of Foggy's arm and cane folded up and hanging from his wrist. 

"No need to trip everyone else trying to navigate the ice if you're guiding me," he'd said when Foggy made a questioning noise. 

"But what if you were walking alone?" 

Matt only smiled. "But I'm not." 

Foggy supposed that was answer enough. He guesses. 

The bar is _packed_ with people, all in various shades of green; several in varying degrees of undress. As they make their way to the bar, Foggy notices somebody go to pinch Matt. He slaps their hand away while Matt's shouting their usual order of Jack and Jameson at the bartender. 

"Dude!" the offender yells, and Foggy yanks Matt's tie over his shoulder. 

" _Shit_ , Fog," Matt chokes, following the pull of his tie. 

"Don't get handsy, my friend, lawyers don't like that," Foggy says, and the would-be-pincher slinks away. 

Matt hands him a pint of Guinness to start off their small army of shots, rubbing a hand over his throat. "Thanks, I guess." 

Foggy nods. He takes a long pull from the pint and licks the foam off his lip. "We need to get creative. We're not wearing enough green." 

"Should I have worn my St. Paddy's Day themed suit?" Matt murmurs around the rim of his pint. 

Foggy starts to laugh, but pauses and gives Matt some choice side-eye which he, Foggy knows for a fact, cannot appreciate. It's a tragedy, really. "You don't actually have one of those, right?" 

Matt shrugs and favors Foggy with a shit-eating grin before draining the rest of his pint. "I might have one in the works. Who knows?" 

"You do _not_." 

Matt only shrugs again. The fucker. 

"Fine, don't tell me. If you don't go out Daredeviling in it next year, though, I'm going to be very upset." And he finishes his Guinness before he can think about the implications of Matt being Daredevil for another year, Matt being _around_ for another year because isn't that what he's been so afraid of? That Matt won't? Is it that easy to assume that he simply will be and not have to wonder "what if?" Can he know for sure that Matt will be with him like this a year from now? 

He thinks he can be. 

"You're thinking too hard," Matt says with a frown. He passes a shot of Jack over to him and picks up his own shot of Jameson. "Here's to not thinking." 

Matt's holding up his glass to Foggy, waiting for him to clink them together. 

It can be that easy. They just have to let it be. 

" _Fuck_ thinking, honestly. Let's get shit-faced." And Foggy slams their shots together so hard that half of it spills over the cuff of Matt's suit jacket and he's reminded of a time that feels so long ago; of him and Matt sitting at the bar at Josie's, of napkins and promises. He's reminded of long nights at Columbia, too drunk and too close. He is reminded of all the things he loves about the way Matt smiles so, _so_ wide for him and, ugh, he's getting maudlin, he should just drink. 

"You got it, buddy," Matt says. 

They take their shots, and the ones lined up after that, and they stop thinking. 

No one makes them move from the corner of the bar they've managed to occupy because they see Matt's glasses and his cane, folded up and resting on the bar top. Matt and Foggy give up their stools to a couple of pretty young women in low-cut tops but otherwise don't stop joking with each other. 

They've switched from shots to cradling glasses. They're pressed up close to each other in the crush of people, but neither of them have made any noises about leaving, so they don't. Their hips are aligned perfectly for less-than-platonic things, less than decent things, less that publicly acceptable things, but he makes no mention of it. He scrubs it from his mind. 

_Be gone, foul demons! Don't think about Matthew Michael Murdock's dick or his very pretty face or his very red lips!_

Foggy's gotten pretty good at at least pretending he's not thinking about something. 

Foggy's worked Matt's tie out from his collar and he's tied it around his head because one too many people have gotten that devilish look on their face. At least one person got a good pinch in before Foggy could stop them. Matt only laughed, but he helps Foggy tie his tie around his own head so that they match. Foggy didn't really need to do it. He's up against the wall, Matt acting as a human shield; no one's tried starting in on him. 

He says so. 

"Not a single person in this bar has attempted to pinch me. I'm actually a little offended," he says, just loud enough for Matt to hear. He's not offended. He thinks he would've been, once upon a time, stuck in the corner of a bar with Matt. 

Matt makes a funny little clucking sound, the kind of sound Foggy would expect from an offended chicken. Or a duck. 

Foggy's in the middle of taking a drink when he feels a sharp pinch on his ass. 

He's almost startled, until he sees Matt hiding a grin in his drink. 

" _Matthew_!" Foggy's using the most scandalized church-lady voice he can muster. 

"Jus' needed ta let you know you was worth pinchin', darlin'," Matt answers, in a truly _horrific_ excuse for a southern accent. 

The two of them laugh for a long time, Foggy wrapping an arm around Matt's neck to tug him closer into a lopsided, definitely inebriated hug. 

Matt's face is real close to his, closer than it's been in - God - months, really. And Foggy hasn't forgotten how pretty he is but, shit, he could stand for a reminder every once in a while. 

"Are you wearing your 'Kiss Me, I'm Irish' one or the one with the little pots of gold on them?" Matt asks, voice suddenly so sober, running his fingers over said tie. Foggy does not swoon. It's a near thing, though. He blames it on the amount of alcohol he's consumed, because it's a lot. 

"The kiss me one," Foggy says. 

Matt takes a small sip from his Jameson, still petting Foggy's tie, before he furrows his brow and knocks back the whole thing. He slides his glass back onto the bar top, pulls off his glasses, sticks them in his coat pocket, and says, "well, if you insist." 

And he pulls Foggy closer by his collar and Foggy _lets_ him and suddenly their mouths are meeting, right there, where everyone and God and the bartender can see. 

Foggy's trying to figure out what to do with his hands and he thinks, well, he only has two, so he tightens one around his glass of Jack and gets the other in Matt's hair, messes it up like he's been wanting to. Matt's mouth opens underneath his in what Foggy thinks is a gasp before he surges forward, both of his hands on Foggy's waist, squeezing. Matt tastes like whiskey and bacon. 

Foggy pulls away a little, whispers "hold on, hold on," against Matt's mouth before gulping down the rest of his drink and slamming the glass down on the bar. 

Matt gives him a second to breathe, doesn't move away from his face; he just rests his mouth against the curve of his jaw, not sucking or biting, just being present. Foggy's happy the bar is as crowded as it is, that way no one can see how close their hips are, can't see the way one of Matt's hands are tracing the waistband of his dress pants, can't see what he knows Matt can feel - what he can feel from _Matt_. He's getting hard against Foggy's thigh. This could be the best day of Foggy's life, but he might be too drunk and their relationship a little too tenuous to make that call just yet. 

After clearing his throat and readjusting his fingers in Matt's hair, Foggy says, "All right, bring it in." 

The smile he feels blooming across his jaw and the hand that sneaks down past his waistband and into his underwear are _devastating_ and also everything. 

It's when Matt's got Foggy's bottom lip between his teeth and Foggy's hand has disappeared down the back of Matt's suit pants to grip his ass tight does Foggy say, "That was a terrible fucking line, by the way." 

"I figured you'd appreciate it better than 'fuck it,'" Matt says against his cheek. 

"Oh, you can fuck something all right." 

Matt actually groans.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m always sad when a holiday passes and there aren’t any holiday themed fic for it so… I guess you can count on me to provide?
> 
> Also, don't get used to me posting so frequently. This is an anomaly. I'm avoiding my grad thesis.
> 
> Catch me on tumblr! :)


End file.
